Publisher: Outland Entertainment

Review: The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny edited by Jonathan Maberry

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny edited by Jonathan MaberryThe Good, The Bad, & The Uncanny: Tales of a Very Weird West by Jonathan Maberry, C. Edward Sellner, Keith R.A. DeCandido, James A. Moore, Greg Cox, Josh Malerman, Carrie Harris, John G. Hartness, Jennifer Brody, Scott Sigler, Laura Anne Gilman, Aaron Rosenberg, Jeffrey J. Mariotte, R. S. Belcher, Marguerite Reed, Maurice Broaddus, Cullen Bunn
Format: eARC
Source: publisher
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: fantasy, horror, short stories, steampunk, Weird West
Pages: 350
Published by Outland Entertainment on December 19, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Gunslingers. Lawmen. Snake-oil Salesmen. Cowboys. Mad Scientists. And a few monsters. The Old West has never been wilder! THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UNCANNY presents sixteen original and never-before-published adventures by some of today’ s most visionary writers who have spun wildly offbeat tales of gunmen, lawmen, magic, and weird science. Saddle up with Josh Malerman, Scott Sigler, Keith DeCandido, Cullen Bunn, R.S. Belcher, Greg Cox, Jeffrey Mariotte, Laura Anne Gilman, Aaron Rosenberg, Maurice Broaddus, John G. Hartness, Carrie Harris, James A. Moore, Marguerite Reed, C. Edward Sellner, Carrie Harris, and Jennifer Brody! These tales twist the American West into a place of darkness, shadows, sudden death, terror in the night, bold heroism, devious magic, and shocking violence. Each story blazes a new trail through very strange territory – discovering weird science, ancient evil, mythic creatures, and lightning-fast action. Edited by Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of A DEADLANDS NOVEL, the Joe Ledger Thrillers, V-WARS, and KAGEN THE DAMNED.

My Review:

I don’t normally start reviews by talking about the author’s – or in this case the editor’s – Foreword. In fact, I very seldom read the Foreword because I’m too interested in getting to the actual story – or in this case stories – to take the time. And they’re generally not all that fascinating. But I read this one and got hit with a sense of nostalgia so strong that I can’t resist mentioning it here. Because the editor and I grew up with those same Westerns on TV pretty much all the time in our childhood, and because we both emerged with the same favorite, The Wild, Wild West.

Not that awful 1999 movie. I mean – and the author meant – the one, the only, the original TV series with Robert Conrad and Ross Martin. I still remember, and can hear Ross Martin’s voice in my head, talking mostly to himself, as he often did, as he was whipping up “the spécialité de la maison of the Hotel Desperation!” to get them out of whatever fix they’d gotten themselves into in that act of the four acts that made up each weekly episode. It’s a VERY fond memory.

So, if you have that same fondness for Westerns – especially those that touched on, or were touched by, or dipped their whole entire six-shooters into the very, very weird, or if you’re a fan of more recently published ‘Weird West’ inspired stories such as Charlaine Harris’ Gunnie Rose series and Laura Anne Gilman’s Huntsmen, or if you just plain love it when the things that go bump in the night are armed with fangs, claws AND six-shooters, this collection might just be your jam.

It certainly was mine. It was mine so much, in fact, that this is one of the rare occasions when I’ve rated each story in the collection individually, so that you can get the full-bodied flavor – complete with actual bodies, for each and every one.

“The Disobedient Devil Dust-up at Copper Junction” by Cullen Bunn
Mad scientist meets even madder gremlins as Professor Dimitri Daedalus and his Navajo partner Yiske arrive in remote Copper Junction Utah, summoned by the Professor’s old mentor to be his next sacrifices to the gremlins tearing up every single human tool in town with applied chaos and malice, only to end in fiery glory sailing off a cliff. Good fun. B

“Devil’s Snare” (Golgotha #1.5) by R.S. Belcher
In spite of being part of a series, this story stands quite well alone. Love-lorn scientist/engineer Clay Turlough, who combines bits of both Dr. Frankenstein AND his monster, gets dragged out of his latest attempt to ‘save’ his ladylove by a more strictly medical case of a poisoned boy, his widowed mother, and the man who is a bit too invested in both. A-

“Bad” by Josh Malerman
Borderline horror about two idiots who think they can rob the most secure bank on ‘The Trail’ by pretending to be one of the bank’s regular depositors. A pretense they intend to enact by literally stealing the man’s face. A hard read because the murdering bank robber wannabes are really, really TSTL to the point where the story is just blood, guts and idiocy. D

“Bigfoot George” by Greg Cox
Gold fever grips a gang of humans claiming a strike in Bigfoot country. The ringleaders think they can treat sasquatch the way they treat their fellow humans – only one of those fellow humans isn’t to both the humans and the sasquatch’ detriment. The humans are nasty in ways that are all too familiar, but the heel-turn of their not-so-human companion is epic enough to nearly redeem their mess – if not them. C+

“Story of the Century” by C. Edward Sellner
A tale of angels and demons, vampires and newspaper reporters. A reporter with a nose for news follows a bounty hunter on the trail of a demon who can wipe out whole towns in a single breath, only to find herself the last witness to an epic confrontation between celestial and demonic forces that wakes a legacy she had no idea she possessed. B

“The Stacked Deck” by Aaron Rosenberg
A card sharp with a magic touch wins his way onto a gambler’s paradise of a riverboat cruise only to learn that the stake he’s playing for is his soul and the deck has been stacked by a demon who believes he holds all the cards. The weird side of the weird West with a fascinating magical system of drawing cards from the ether. Maverick would have fit right in. And won. B+

“Desert Justice” by Maurice Broaddus
A black man with a righteous cause, the will to back it up and the grief not to care if he goes down in the fight takes up a magical badge to battle the evil spirit of the dead Confederacy that white men are using to vilify, subjugate and lynch blacks who stand up for themselves in the west after they fled the ‘legal slavery’ of the sharecropping system. If you enjoyed the author’s novella Buffalo Soldier you’ll love this one too. I certainly did. A

“In the End, the Beginning” by Laura Anne Gilman
A still heartbreaking but slightly more hopeful alternate magical version of the white man’s invasion of the west. It can’t be stopped, but powerful spirits CAN, if they are willing to sacrifice themselves and their magic in the cause, alter the means by which it happens, in the hopes that the ones who can’t be stopped are the best of their kind and not the worst.  A

“Nightfall on the Iron Dragon Line” by James A. Moore
The inevitable train story because no western or weird version thereof would be complete without one train story. The concept is interesting, and a story about a lawman bringing in a dangerous criminal always works in westerns but this one needed to be longer for all the disparate elements – especially the worm and the Chinese engineers – to come together. C

“Simple Silas” by Scott Sigler
This is straight up horror and the story relies on the protagonist having an undefined intellectual disability (because they were back then) in a way that just makes the whole thing more uncomfortable than compelling. D

“Hell and Destruction are Never Full” by Marguerite Reed
A bounty hunter captures a man for more money than she’s ever seen in her life and doesn’t want to hear about the real reason the bounty was set – until she comes face to face with a vampire and his renfield who plan to shut up a witness and get a meal out of it at the same time. That this has a happy ending is a big surprise. It’s not the standout in the collection but it was pretty good all the same. B

“The Legend of Long-Ears” by Keith R.A. DeCandido
A meeting that never happened between two legends, Calamity Jane and Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves. Calamity is a seer who drinks to keep her visions of the future at bay, while she does her best to keep the chaos agent known as Long-Ears from taking more lives than he’s due. She saves Reeves but can’t save them all. However, she saves so many that Long-Ears himself travels the west telling any who will listen the tale of his greatest and most respected enemy. This one seems like the quintessential weird west story, or at least one branch of it, with legends meeting, native spirits interfering, respect between enemies and tragedies all around. A+

“The Night Caravan” by Jennifer Brody
A post-apocalyptic tale where the desert has returned, while technology and fallout have bred monsters and settlements are far apart while travel puts you in danger of being ridden by one of the monsters. The mix of high tech and low villainy with a mythical utopia that is probably a boondoggle makes the story interesting. B

“Dreadful” by John Hartness
A middle-aged widow and a tired vampire-hunting cowboy team up to wipe out a nest of vampires that is eating their way across the west like locusts. Separately, they’re victims, together they might just be enough to get the job done. And if there’s an after, they might have a chance at being happy in it, together. B+

“Thicker Than Water” by Carrie Harris
Families are terrible. His brothers are human monsters. Her sisters are sea monsters. But family is family and blood is thicker than water, even when the deck of the ship is awash in it. This one just wasn’t my cuppa, and I’m trying really hard not to think about what the tea in that cuppa would be made of. C

“Barnfeather’s Magical Medicine Show and Tent Extravaganza” by Jeffrey J. Mariotte
Another one a bit too high on the creep-o-meter for me, about a magical circus tent that steals children and eats them to keep itself and its avatar powered – or perhaps the other way around, pursued by a lawman hoping to rescue children who are already gone. C

Escape Rating B: I had to do math to get to an overall rating, just as I did for the review of a previous collection by this publisher, Never Too Old to Save the World, which is going to end up on my Best Books list for this year because I’ve referred to it so often.

I enjoyed this collection, well, not quite as much as Never Too Old, but still quite a bit. Even the stories that went too far into horror for my personal tastes, or the couple that just didn’t work for me, still added to the overall feeling of ‘those thrilling days of yesteryear’ even if it was a weirder and more uncanny yesteryear than The Lone Ranger ever imagined.

Or perhaps especially because it was a whole lot weirder and considerably more uncanny. Just as marvelously as The Wild, Wild West so often was.

Review: Never Too Old to Save the World edited by Addie J. King and Alana Joli Abbott

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Never Too Old to Save the World edited by Addie J. King and Alana Joli AbbottNever Too Old to Save the World: A Midlife Calling Anthology by Alana Joli Abbott, Addie J. King
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: fantasy, science fiction, short stories, urban fantasy
Pages: 318
Published by Outland Entertainment on February 7, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Once every generation there is a Chosen One, who will stand between humanity and darkness.
But why is the Chosen One so often a teenager? Why do only children get swept through portals to save the fantastic world on the other side? Whose idea was it to put the fate of the world in the hands of someone without a fully developed prefrontal cortex?
In Never Too Old to Save the World, nineteen authors explore what would happen if the Chosen One were called midlife. What would happen if the Chosen One were:
a soccer moma cat ladya nosy grandmothera social workera retireean aging swordmaster?
The Chosen One could be anyone— because when the universe calls, the real question is whether the hero will take up the mantle and answer their midlife calling. Sometimes the world needs a hero who's already been in the thick of chaos and survived. In those cases, age does matter.

My Review:

What if you didn’t find a wardrobe to Narnia – or anywhere else – back when you were 8? And you didn’t get your Hogwarts letter at 11? And Gandalf didn’t even manage to come to take you on an adventure at 50?

Or perhaps, by the time Gandalf found you at 50, you thought you were too old to go on adventures – or – and much more likely –  had too many commitments in the so-called ‘real world’ to run off and leave your responsibilities behind? After all, Bilbo very nearly did.

That’s what this collection is about. It’s all about people who pick up the mantle of the ‘Chosen One’ in some fantasy or science fictional world who are explicitly not children or teens. Who are a bit too tied down – or a bit too wised up – to be the fool that rushes in where angels rightly fear to tread. Or so they think.

This collection is for everyone who missed that wardrobe or that letter and still wonders whether or not they’d have what it takes – or have the willingness to feel the fear and do it anyway – if a white wizard or a mad man with a blue box came calling for them.

There are 19 fabulous stories in this collection – and I think I loved every single one. To the point where I can’t just pick one favorite. I have to pick two.

My favorite fantasy story is “Jackalope Wives” by Ursula Vernon – who also writes marvelously fantastic fantasy and horror as T. Kingfisher. “Jackalope Wives” is the only story in the book that has been previously published, originally in Apex Magazine and later in her short story collection Jackalope Wives and Other Stories.

This is the story that won the 2014 Nebula Award for Best Short Story and should have won the 2015 Hugo Award in the same category. But, well, puppies. I digress and I need to stop to keep from going there again. Because ARRGGGHHH. Still.

“Jackalope Wives” is one of those stories that surprises the reader with a twist at the end that is even more heartbreaking, in its way, than the story you thought you were reading – which was already heartbreaking enough. Grandma Harken is absolutely correct that “You get over what you can’t have faster than you get over what you could.” But the truth of that statement doesn’t make the getting over any faster or any easier.

As a counterweight to the bitter, bitter sweetness of “Jackalope Wives”, my science fictional favorite story is “Launch Day Milkshakes” by Jim C. Hines, which is literally laugh out loud funny. To the point where I started laughing and couldn’t get a breath OR stop as my spouse looked over at me like I’d lost my mind because I could not catch enough breath to explain the joke.

At first, “Launch Day Milkshakes” is a story about absolutely deliciously getting one over on a misogynistic asshat boss in the biggest and best way possible. It’s also a brainship story in the vein of Anne McCaffrey’s classic, The Ship Who Sang. But that’s not all it is, and neither of those things were the parts that made me laugh so hard – no matter how much I enjoyed the asshat’s comeuppance. Which I very much did. I’m not going to spoil this one because it’s just so much fun when you get the joke – and see it get batted around like the universe’s biggest ball of yarn.

I know I said two favorites, but my third is kind of a riff on Buffy, meaning that there’s some urban fantasy in here as well. “Lean In: The Lord of Hell is Coming” by Ericka Kahler starts out with the local representative for the equivalent of the Watchers coming to a CEO to tell her that demons are coming to her city and that she’s the ‘Chosen One’ who is supposed to vanquish them. It’s not news to Mary Ann because she already has, just not in the way that heaven expected or that hell can ever manage to fight. I think this one is funnier the longer you think about it.

Of the rest of the collection, there are considerably more fantasy stories than SF as fantasy does tend to lend itself more to ‘chosen one’ narratives. Not that there haven’t been more than a few famous SF stories in this vein (I’m looking at you, Luke Skywalker – ahem). But magical appointments, by their very nature, do find themselves a bit more comfy – while their protagonists are generally quite uncomfy – in fantasy.

Because I loved this collection so hard, I can’t resist a brief shout out to every single one of the stories in it. The SF stories are listed first because there were fewer of them and because I’m contrary that way.

  • “The M.A.M.I. Incident” by Guadalupe Garcia McCall reminded me a whole lot of Day Zero by Robert C. Cargill which makes for a great but uncomfortable story.
  • “Utopia” by Vaseem Khan about making a friend out of a very great enemy.
  • “All the World’s Treasures” by Kimberly Pauley about a family legacy that is just so much bigger on the inside than it first appears.
  • “Big Momma Saves the World” by Maurice Broaddus about the great power in bad macaroni and cheese.
  • “A Legacy of Ghosts” by Sarah Hans about exorcizing one’s very own demon family with the power of positive thinking.
  • “Adya and the Messengers” by Jaymie Wagner about the proper treatment of heavenly messengers and their steeds.
  • “Soccer Mom Saves the World” by Addie J. King, a story whose title does pretty much say it all.
  • “My Roots Run Deep” by John F. Allen about a social worker saving the multiverse and getting her groove back at the same time.
  • “It’s My Nature – A ‘Monster Hunter Mom’ Adventure” by JD Blackrose, another one whose title gives more than a bit of a clue about the story.
  • “Truthteller” by Linda Robertson, a historical fantasy about an object of power that isn’t quite what any of the parties seeking it imagined.
  • “Granny” by R.J. Sullivan about a neighborhood snoop who is way more than she seems.
  • “The Sunspear” by Alexandra Pitchford, about a young woman who believes she has a destiny and a middle aged woman who is running from hers.
  • “Once a Queen” by Alana Joli Abbott, a Narnia-like story with a much better ending.
  • “By the Works of Her Hands” by LaShawn M. Wanak, another Narnia-type story where the portal opens as a lure to pull the right person in chasing after the young fool who rushes in believing that they are ‘the one’ when they’re just bait for their mother.
  • “Strange Wings” by Kathryn Ivey about a warning that comes nearly too late.
  • And last in both the collection and this list: “The Mountain Witch” by Lucy A. Snyder about the uses to which both heroes and villains are put when they are both female.

Escape Rating A+: I don’t normally list every single story in a collection like this, but this collection frequently got me in the feels and gave me something to identify with in just about every story. Sometimes we all need that reminder that age is just a number and that everyone has it in them to save, if not the world, at least their corner of it.

I’m also still hoping against hope that Gandalf will finally get the hint!